As a Guilty Mum
by Emma CS Me
Summary: "You bought a two hundred quid silver teething ring!" (Or, Cat is not lending Lysa a penny ever again.)


**Author's Notes:** so this fic premise is extremely obscure, and extremely Australian. Basically, my headcanon is that modern au!Lysa is totally the Guilty Mum from the Checkout. And then I had to make a fic of it.

* * *

"Lysa, why is your son on a leash?"

Lysa looks affronted. "It's not a leash," she says. "This is his safety harness."

Robin is currently in the middle of very safely wrapping the cord of his safety harness around his throat. "Why is your son in a safety harness, then?" Cat asks.

"To keep him safe."

Catelyn blinks. "We're going to the park, Lysa, not rock climbing."

"Well with _your_ son there, I don't know what sort of bad ideas he'll lead my little Sweetrobin into." And Cat, who has spent most of the last ten years terrified of Bran's climbing habit, is suddenly immensely proud of him for reasons she can't quite fathom. "And what if he's about to fall, or be approached by some strange man, or be swooped by birds–"

"Can't you just be worried about him wandering off?"

Lysa scoffs. "Robin won't wander off. Not without his GPS alerting me."

Cat blinks. "He has a GPS?"

"Not under his skin or anything, I don't want the government finding us," says Lysa. "No, it's in his watch. See."

Robin proudly sticks forward his watch, and Cat can't help but notice that one, it looks like it cost at least three times what Ned's did, and two, it has the actual time off by about three hours.

"How much did that cost?"

"Oh, a few hundred," Lysa says. "But you can't put a price on peace of mind."

"And what if he takes the watch off?"

Lysa sighs. "Then the GPS in his ring will track him, honestly Cat, I would have thought you'd know all this."

Cat, who is perhaps too proud a mother than is entirely good for her, balls a fist by her side and decides this conversation is not good for her. "I... like your necklace," she says, although she doesn't really, but Lysa is wearing a necklace and that's something less weird to talk about.

"Why, thank you," Lysa smiles at her. "It was Robin's first teething ring."

Cat blinks. "You wear your son's teething ring as a necklace?"

"Of _course_ I do, Cat, what am I meant to do, just throw it out?" Lysa asks. "It's stirling silver, it set me back two hundred pounds."

"You bought a _two hundred quid silver teething ring?!_ "

Lysa looks bemused. "Don't look so surprised Cat; you gave me the money."

"I did what."

"Well, you gave me some money, I'm not sure I told you what it was for – but still, he loves it, don't you darling?"

Robin grins and grabs at the ring like he was six months old again. "Careful, sweetheart," Lysa says as her precious babe almost wrings her throat, but she doesn't do anything about it. Cat loves her uncle Brynden, but she cannot believe she let him talk her into visiting.

"Look, Lysa," she says, "have you at least packed the picnic?"

"In a moment, Cat," Lysa says, "I have to let the unsandwiches finish baking first."

Cat closes her eyes. "What on earth are unsandwiches?"

"Not sandwiches," Lysa says, to which Cat, if there wasn't a child in the room, would reply _no shit._ "Little Robin doesn't like sandwiches, see. So it takes a couple of hours for these to be ready, but it's worth it."

 _Oh god, I'm going to have to spend hours here,_ Cat thinks. _Can I possibly smuggle Bran to safety?_

"Then I have to cut them into the right shapes; he's very fussy about that," Lysa says. "But don't worry, the formula's already packed, so it shouldn't take too long."

" _Formula?!_ "

"Not baby formula," Lysa reassures her. "I wouldn't give him anything that wasn't right for him. No, this is a specially designed nutritional supplement for children aged three to ten, to aid in his natural development."

"Lysa, no eight year old needs baby formula!"

Lysa shoots her a withering glare. "Well, now I see why your children turned out the way the did."

Oh, that fucking does it–

"Mummy," Robin anxiously tugs on his mother's sleeve, "mummy, my hands are dirty."

 _They're dirty because you've drooled all over them,_ thinks Cat, but Lysa sighs and smiles. "Then go wash them darling." Robin nods and gets up, and Cat is genuinely surprised when Lysa doesn't follow. "And darling!" she calls. "Remember – use the soap dispenser, not the hand sanitiser, if your father's bought it again. We don't want you getting any superbugs."

Robin nods and runs off, and Cat considers explaining that that is not how the hand sanitiser-superbug phenomenon works, before she decides it's not worth it. "You have a soap dispenser?" she asks.

Lysa nods. "So he doesn't have to touch any germy pumps while cleaning his hands. You should consider one. It was only about three grand."

"Three grand?" Cat thinks for a second. "Hang on, _my_ three grand?!"

"I told you I was doing bathroom renovations!"

"You told me it was an emergency!" Cat shouts. "I thought a pipe had burst and flooded the house from the way you carried on, I had to say yes!"

"But it was an emergency!" says Lysa. "What if he got MRSA, or hepatitis, or lupus, or polio, or–"

* * *

Once Cat and Bran finally get home, Bran immediately goes to take a nap to try and recover, and Cat goes for the kitchen and gets out a bottle of wine and a glass. Then, checking that Bran really has gone, she forgets about the glass and starts swigging from the bottle.

When she slams it on the counter she does so so hard that she knocks over her handbag, and her lipstick and wallet fall out. _Great._ Then she blinks, and realises two wallets just fell out. _Huh?_ Then she sees the silver teething ring attached to one of them. That was one of her only successes, convincing Lysa to put it away and attach it to her keyring instead, because Robin constantly pawing at it was embarrassing her.

Curiously, Cat opens the wallet and – _there's five hundred pounds in here!_

"Mother?" She looks up and sees Robb in the doorway with a concerned look, seemingly called by the sound of her slamming the bottle. "...I'm guessing it didn't go well?"

Cat stares at him. "Are you eighteen yet?"

He blinks. "Okay, first of all: if you birthed me, you should probably know that already. Second of all: why?"

"Because we are getting drunk and watching strippers."

"What."

"I mean it!" Cat says. "I don't care, if Lysa wants to waste my money pretending her near-puberty son is still a toddler and that makes her a better mother than me, fine, I'll just waste her money being a terrible mother and buying you booze and women and probably getting the authorities called on me–"

"Mother, please don't buy my first sexual experience out of spite," Robb says. "Because Theon has been planning that for years, and if someone beats him to the punch, he will cry."

Cat sighs. Robb's right, it's a stupid plan. "Can _I_ get drunk and watch strippers?" she pouts.

Robb seems to think this over. "...I mean you might want to ask Father's opinion first, but I don't see why not."

That makes her laugh. "Right. Now, I'm going to go back to my room and do my homework and probably die a virgin, and you... to be honest I wouldn't fault you for just getting drunk enough to forget this whole day happened."

And as he goes, Cat can't help but smile. Such a mature lad.


End file.
